This love will last forever

Zurich couple still lovebirds after 60 years

Lloyd and Leona Steinberg of Zurich celebrated 60 years in January 10. The Strip wanted to know their secret.

As told to Casey Lessard
Photo by Sandra Regier

Leona Steinberg: It was 1947, and I had graduated as a registered nurse from St. Mary’s hospital in Kitchener. I had broken up with my boyfriend because he was going to give me a diamond ring and I didn’t want a diamond ring. I didn’t feel that way about him. His sister was in my class and she ended up telling me that he was going to give me this ring, so I told him goodbye. All of a sudden, I realized that our grad dance was coming up and I didn’t have a date. My girlfriend said, “Don’t worry about it – I’ll get you one.” Her cousin was taking her to the dance, and she said she’d get Harry to bring one of his pals. The boy was very nice and quiet. He drove a car and wanted to know the colour of my gown so he could buy me a corsage to match. And he did. He was a good dancer; he could polka like nobody’s business, and I enjoy polkaing. We had a good time – he never talked much. We said goodnight at the door. That was Wednesday.
Saturday night, Mary said to me, Kitchener’s playing in Waterloo, and we’re going to the ball game. I said, “Who’s going?” She said, “You and I.” I said, “No, I’m not. I haven’t got any money.” She said, “You’ve got your grad money.” Finally I gave in. We had to take the trolley to Waterloo. Lloyd was there with the boy who had taken me to the grad dance, Benny. He was noisy, yelling at a player in the field. I wished he would keep quiet because he was spoiling the whole thing.
We had to be in at 11:30 at night, and if you had to ring the bell, you lost your half-day. I said to Mary, “Look at the time. We’ve got to get home.” She never worried about time. Benny heard me saying this to her and said, we’ll drive you home. She said we could stay to the end of the game.
I told her to sit in the back seat with me, “I am not taking a chance on sitting with that one.” We got into the car and who crawls into the back seat with me, but Lloyd.
On the way home, he asked if he could take me out. I didn’t know how I was going to say no. Monday night we had religion class. Tuesday night we had doctors come and teach us. Anyway, I got to Thursday and I had no excuses left.
We walked down to Victoria Park. He told me all about himself and my estimation of him got better. We started to go out and seven and a half months later we were married.
Lloyd Steinberg: I guess she thought I was all right; here we are 60 years later.

A decent proposal
Leona: We were, again, in the backseat of Benny’s car coming home from a ball game. Mary was in the front – she started going with Benny then. I had just gotten my grad ring, and I was playing with it. It was new and special. I was taking it up and down my finger, and he took my other hand and he said, “Someday, I’m going to put another ring on that finger.” And I thought, “Oh. Okay.”
We were married January 10, 1948 on my parents’ 37th wedding anniversary. It was very quiet. We were married in Dublin. And we were happy. I just said to him the other day, “You know, in 60 years, we haven’t even had a decent fight.”
Lloyd: No sense arguing.
Leona: I’d win anyway.

Making a house a home
Leona: You’re always short of money. The kids are always part of something. But you don’t spend money foolishly. We didn’t have a car until 1955. We didn’t feel we could afford it. We bought a lot and papa (Lloyd) dug the foundation with a shovel and a wheelbarrow.
Lloyd: How would you like to do that?
Leona: He did most of the construction. Didn’t know what he was doing. We took the plans for the house to Beaver Lumber.
I was seven months pregnant and shingling. My father-in-law came home – they lived next door – and I leaned over the edge and said, “Hi there, pop.” He said, “What are you doing up there, woman? Don’t you know you’re pregnant?”
Lloyd: That house cost us $4400 to build ourselves.
Leona: Our oldest was born in November 1948; Susan was born October 1949; Debbie was born October 1950; Patti was born May 1952; Paul was born September 1954; and Cathy was born December 1960.

Making it last
Leona: Every time that man leaves the house, he always comes and kisses me goodbye. Only a couple of weeks ago, he didn’t. And I got right upset about it. I said, “Did you know you didn’t kiss me goodbye?” He said, “I didn’t.” I said, “No, you didn’t, and don’t ever do that again.”
One time in 1959, he was taking three of our girls and two leaders to a Girl Guide camping trip in Elmira. I was on duty at St. Mary’s Hospital on the children’s floor. There was a car accident in Elmira, and the girl downstairs said, “Leona, you’re getting three kids in. We don’t know who they are, but they say the mother works here at St. Mary’s, and Dr. Friday’s the doctor.” I said, “Helen, that’s my family.”
I almost went crazy until they started wheeling them in by ambulance. But the one thing that kept me going was that I had kissed them all goodbye.
Debbie had a fractured leg. Susan had platelets in her eyes and couldn’t see. Patti had bitten her tongue. I was afraid to ask where their dad was. I can’t live without him. Lloyd didn’t come in until much later because he was helping at the scene.

He’s a keeper
Leona: There isn’t a day that goes by that my husband doesn’t tell me at least 40 times a day, “I love you, mom.” That means a lot.
One woman told me a while ago that her husband has only said it once since they were married, and that was before he went in for heart surgery. When she heard my husband saying that to me, she said, “He’s a keeper.”

Winter Storm

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Bringing a smile to their eyes

Photographers offer free photo sessions to families dealing with cancer

Story by Casey Lessard
Photos courtesy Sandra Regier

“You always have the image that this can’t happen to me, this is going to happen to somebody else,” says Michelle Smith, whose brother Mike Steckle is recovering from cancer. “You just think it can’t happen to someone who’s 35 and healthy. It can happen to anyone. It affects everybody in some ways.”
Steckle was diagnosed last August after experiencing disabling back pain.
“I couldn’t walk anymore,” he says. “Dr. Teeple at emergency said we’re going to do some blood work, and she told me later that she thought from the start that I had leukemia. It was pretty advanced along, so I spent the next six weeks in hospital trying to get into remission.”
The therapy was successful, but the road to recovery was long and painful.
“I spent the next five months sleeping to recover from the chemo and radiation,” he adds. “I had zero energy and clots in my lungs. The beginning of this spring, things got a lot better.”
In the meantime, his business, a power-washing company, had to continue without him as a hands-on operator.
“The best I could do was drive there and sleep in the truck, letting the guys do the work. I did that for four or five months. I had no control over what the guys were doing, so I learned to be more laid back. It puts life in perspective.”
That’s where Michelle Smith’s friend Sandra Regier comes in. Her job is to put everything in perspective and capture the moment on film (or in the modern era, on a memory card).
“It had been almost ten years since we had family pictures taken,” Smith says. “Sandra called me and told me about Smiling Eyes, and asked me if we would be interested. I said yes instantly, because I knew my mom and my brother would love it.”
Smiling Eyes is a non-profit organization of photographers who offer their time and talent to photograph people dealing with cancer. Photographers spend time with the family and provide the images on a CD free of charge. No catch.
“My aunt passed away three years ago,” Regier says. “I had photos of her, but not a portrait of just her. I ended up making a portrait of her in Photoshop because we didn’t have one. It would have been nice to have had the forethought to take a photograph instead.
“I think it’s important to capture the stages of life, whether you’re healthy or not. To be able to look back years ago and see how big the kids were. On a personal note, I made a point of getting my picture taken this year with each of my kids. It’s just so important to have pictures of your family. When you look back and see how much people have grown and changed, you realize how important those images are.”
Michelle Smith agrees.
“A lot of people don’t take the time to get family pictures taken. It’s great to have somebody who wants to come into your home and capture memories. I don’t know when we would have taken a family picture if Sandra hadn’t called us.”
“It gives you the memory,” Steckle says. “I have a pretty good prognosis. God forbid anything should happen, you have the portraits for your family. It’s nice to have a decent picture that everybody’s in.”
Other families are seeing the value of the process, too.
“The family I took pictures of Sunday,” Regier notes, “the daughter said they wished they had done this a year ago because her dad isn’t with them anymore. Now her mom has lung cancer, so they wish they had the picture with their dad. But at least she’ll have a picture with her mom and her little girl.”
And the photographer gets the satisfaction of doing something nice for someone who will appreciate it.
“I think pictures are important. We do this free of charge, and the images are theirs to do as they will. Hopefully they’ll hang them on the wall.”
To reach Sandra Regier or find out more about Smiling Eyes, call 519-852-4892 or visit www.sandraregier.com

A tough year for the bean crop

Zurich Bean Festival
Friday August 24 starting at 7 p.m.
Cruise night, midway and fireworks
Saturday August 25 – 7 a.m. to 1 a.m.
Pancake and sausage breakfast, midway, car show, beans and pork chop dinner, entertainment all day and dance starting at 9 p.m.

Cash crop farmer Randy Regier, now nearing 50, has been growing edible beans in the Zurich area for all of his life. Regier operates 9,000 to 10,000 acres of land, rotating wheat, corn, soybeans and white beans.

As told to Casey Lessard

It’s a family tradition right back to my grandfather. We’ve always been in the edible bean business. It’s always been a big part of our operations and that goes way back to the beginning.
As a young fellow, it was an exciting time to get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and sit on a tractor and help my father with this crop. There’s a lot of enjoyment and pride in this crop and with that we always need a reward.
Forty years ago, there were people who in a good year in a good market would sometimes grow 100 acres of edible beans and it would purchase that farm that year. Today, that could never happen.
There’s been a huge change in the land values versus the return on a per acre basis. Today’s land value is probably 50 times higher than it was 40 years ago, and the value of the edible bean is probably still at the same price. They were getting $25-$30 to the hundredweight, and today that value is still the same. The production cost is probably three to four times higher. That reflects the industry as a whole. You make it up through volume.
My grandfather grew probably 30 acres of edible beans. My father at the end of his time in the business was probably in the 1,000 to 2,000 acres a year. Between myself and my brothers, we are probably in the neighbourhood of 6,000 acres of beans.
When we harvest them, we do a rod pulling process, where a rotating rod slides under the ground. It just pulls the plant out or nips it off. Another machine splits the ripe pod – it has to be ripe and it has to be dry, so it’s in the mid-day harvesting – it separates the pod and the bean that’s inside away from each other. It’s collected through screenings and it goes into an elevator that takes it into a bin that collects only the bean itself. They thrash very easily once they’re dry.
This pulling process has to be done through the evening hours when they’re in a tough stage from the dews so that the pod is hard to crack. Then you need the heat of the day to crack the pods open.
Edible beans don’t like a lot of heat. If you go into the southern counties, where the heat units are a lot higher, that was a hindrance to this crop. In early spring or in the fall, the lake was a bit of a safeguard from frost. It keeps temperatures more moderated. I think that’s why it was started in this area and grew to a point where processing plants were established, and the industry has grown from there.
It’s a labour intensive crop. We’re always dealing with weed control. We have insects. Five, six or seven years ago, we never thought of leafhoppers. Now, leafhoppers are quite an issue in the edible bean industry. It’s not a major issue to control but it comes at another expense.
There’s always the concern of a frost in the spring that would mean a replant. And there’s always the possibility of an early frost that would hinder the plant from maturing and having a good quality bean.
This year, the drought has been very devastating on all the crops in this part of the country. The edible beans are no exception. The drought has slowed down growth because of the lack of moisture. If we have a lack of plant, we have a lack of availability of spots to flower and set pods. With the drought we can have poor pollination taking place. There is a point when the plant triggers a shutoff and aborts. With the drought they’re in a stress form and are aborting small pods to ensure survival of the plant.
I expect this year that yields will be probably 30 per cent off what we would normally have.
If you have zero bushels, it doesn’t matter what the price is. This year, this crop will probably not be a profitable crop. The market values are respectable but yields will be down. You take the good with the bad, and this year, with the drought, it will be a severe year economically.
The agricultural business has become not nearly as lucrative as it was in years gone by. For a lot of reasons, our expenses have continued to rise. Yields overall - with technology of different varieties - have increased some, but have not kept up with the pace of the expenses to operate these operations.
When we have a situation like this, it’s going to be more difficult to recover.
The effort that farmers put into putting a good quality product in front of the consumer is probably lost. There’s a lot of risk, a lot of hard work put into the quality the consumer wants and sometimes, because of Mother Nature, that quality is very hard to obtain. That comes at the expense of the producer. The consumer probably lacks education of really what the food chain is about in this day and age. Thirty to 50 years ago it was much more appreciated.
Farmers are stubborn, and I think we will carry on and try to produce this crop for many years to come.

The Bean Festival
A lot of people put a lot of work into making the Zurich Bean Festival a good event. I think it would be nice if the bean festival did what the London Rib Fest does, having a contest for different recipes. We have to change with the times and show people who come to the event all the new ways of displaying this product, and I think a competition would make it fun. There are a lot of different recipes that can be used to cook and serve beans and it would be good for the consumer to see there are many ways of enjoying beans. It would make the festival more of a bean event.
It’s amazing how many people over the years have come here for this festival. I’ve been far and wide, and you say you’re from Canada. “Okay…” You say Ontario. “Okay…” You say Zurich. “Okay…” But you mention the bean festival and it’s “OH!” It’s put Zurich on the map and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.